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Matthew Murdock/sheet
Skills 'Master Martial Artist --' Matt has studied extensively in the art of hand to hand fighting, combining numerous styles of kung fu, karate, ninjitsu, judo and boxing into his own particular style. His sightlessness and reliance on his radar sense also add distinctive elements to Daredevil's fighting capabilities. By any measure, DD would be considered in the top tier of hand to hand combatants in his home dimension, able to hold his own often against even superhuman opposition by dint of sheer skill alone. 'Gymnast & Acrobat --' Matt has been running the rooftops, scrambling the fire escapes and balancing on the ledges of Hell's Kitchen and New York since he was first able to crawl out the window of his father's cramped apartment. While his formal training came largely as a part of his martial arts studies, he's essentially pushed himself all his life, doing parkour before parkour existed, leaping, cavorting, flipping and using his natural athleticism to perform amazing feats of acrobatic derring-do. His radar sense particularly aids in this, as he's always hyperaware of his surroundings and able to find handholds, poles, and angles that others might miss with their conventional senses. 'Law --' Matt Murdock is a member in good standing of the New York State Bar Association. He graduated at the top of his class and possesses, by acknowledgement of his peers, one of the keenest legal minds in the city. While he hasn't specialized his practice as much as some, his particular areas of expertise lie in criminal defense, civil liability and civil rights. He's known as a champion of the common man and an opponent of any form of discrimination or prejudice - and against the use of the mighty leverage of financial power to get away with trampling others. 'Stick Combat --' Daredevil routinely fights with 'battle batons', a pair of combat staves broken down from the cane he often carries unnecessarily in his civilian guise. He can use them as effective weapons in close combat, striking expertly at joints and weak spots to take out opponents. He's also skilled at using them as throwing weapons, even taking advantage of spatial geometry to often cause them to return to his hand after a potent strike. 'Rhetoric & Persuasion --' Even more than most lawyers, Matt Murdock has a gift for public speaking and argumentation. He knows how to make his case, spot flaws in the logic of his enemies and present strong evidence on his own behalf. He can easily win the sympathies of his listeners, often with self-deprecation or humor, while he can deftly manipulate his opponent into looking much worse for the wear. He's made more than a few closing arguments that are taught in law school classrooms currently, and he's known for his penchant for drama. 'Urban Predator --' Matt Murdock's lived in the concrete jungle his whole life. He knows virtually every brick and crease of his home neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen, and could probably come close with several of the nearby boroughs as well. He knows the landscape intimately and often from the angle of a hunter. An apex predator of this environment, few can match Daredevil's cunning use of architecture, place and street knowledge. He quite often literally backs his prey into a corner and can cut off most conventional means and avenues of escape with relative ease. 'Tracking --' While he often relies on his superhuman senses to guide him, Matt nonetheless must also apply his intellect to the art of tracking and hunting a target, knowing how far to stay back, how to anticipate potential routes and to acquire the target in the first place. With his incredible sensory capabilities and this skill, he can follow almost anyone through the city and often find seemingly unfindable prey. 'Stealth --' The art of ninjitsu is an art of stealth, and Stick emphasized its importance as part of Matt's martial training. Going unseen, sticking to shadows, working and moving in silence, all of these create incredible advantages for a warrior of Daredevil's skills. Matt's tactile sensitivity is such that he can sense visible light on his body, even that faint warmth, even through clothes, and so he can follow the lines of darkness unerringly in spite of his own blindness. If he doesn't want to be seen, odds are, you're not going to find him until it's too late. 'Infiltration --' A burglar's skillset, albeit used for good purpose, but nonetheless designed for the undetected entry and invasion of guarded premises. Matt can detect and disarm security systems, recognize dogs and guard patterns and pick most forms of locks and safes. He knows how to move in and out quickly, formulate a plan to get what he's come for, and to leave no trace of his passage once he's gone. Very useful if your enemy just happens to keep an office or secret lair somewhere. 'First Aid --' Masked vigilantes can't generally hit the emergency room, so Matt's learned how to deal with many forms of injuries and harm on his own. He can treat broken bones, bullet wounds, wrap and bind stretched tendons and sew up lacerations. He also has learned CPR and emergency resuscitation techniques for victims he comes across at risk of death or drowning. 'Theology --' Matt is a practicing and devout cradle Catholic. He often reads theological writing and philosophy in his spare time and enjoys debating and discussing the subject with others. He doesn't mind others disagreeing with him, and has often surprised some with the knowledge to be found in the head of a man who dresses as a demon. Powers and Abilities 'Heightened Hearing --' While he may have lost his eyesight, Matt's other senses have become superhumanly keen, even far beyond that which might normally come in compensation for his lost sight. His hearing allows him to detect sound from at least ten times as far as the average person, and his fine control allows him to sort and parse the data he receives that way. He can hear a person's heartbeat, using it both as a form of identification and as a lie detector, monitoring its rhythm for the telltale skip of deception. He can determine the shape of a room on a recording from the acoustics alone, and hear sounds beyond the range of normal human hearing, on frequencies above and below, that can provide extraordinary clues. 'Heightened Smell & Taste --' Matt's superhuman sense of smell allows him, first and foremost, to identify and mark individuals around him, his primary means of identifying people other than the sound of their voice. He can monitor the smell of sweat, pick up countless subscents that might mark past locations, associations, chemicals or materials they've come in contact with. He can easily track a person through the complex miasma of the city by scent alone, even for up to a half a day after they've moved. His sense of taste allows him to taste a single grain of salt in a spoonful of sugar. The subtleties allow him to taste supposedly 'flavorless' additives, making him both tend to go on a very natural diet and to make him very difficult to poison with food or drink. With his smell and taste combined, he can function almost like a human forensics lab, able to read crimescenes for hidden messages undetectable to the average eye, and even some advanced scientific instruments. 'Heightened Touch --' Matt's incredible tactile sense is so sensitive that it allows him to read newsprint on paper, his fingertips detecting the different of ink from paper. He can feel vibrations with great sensitivity, feeling other people walk throughout buildings around him through the soles of his feet. He can find texture in even seemingly smooth surfaces, and can identify specific structures that might seem identical to the naked eye by those specifics. He can feel the slightest movements of air around him, allowing him to detect movements or dimensions even without the use of his radar sense. 'Radar Sense --' Daredevil possesses a sixth sense that has replaced his sight in many ways, a 360 degree radar which gives him incredibly detailed impressions of his surroundings. He can feel the dimensions of the room he's in, sense people and objects, and effectively know all the physical aspects of the world around him in every direction for up to thirty feet. Because he doesn't rely on sight, he often senses things mere sight would miss, as his radar doesn't 'focus' like eyesight, and thus everything is equally important, allowing him to then sort the incoming data and often find secrets. His radar sense makes him physically impossible to sneak up on, and gives him an amazing advantage in finding handholds and utilizing angles while acrobatically running through Hell's Kitchen. 'Physical Conditioning --' While he doesn't have the advantage of a Super-Soldier Serum or Red Room, Daredevil nonetheless trains relentlessly, both in the gym and in his nightly patrols. His body possesses great endurance, strength, stamina and agility, making him an Olympic-level athlete by any measure of the imagination. He is at or near peak human capacity in every measure of physical health and conditioning. 'Faith & Determination --' Daredevil, for all the darkness he's seen and encountered, remains an idealist. He believes deeply in the causes for which he fights, a determination that makes him difficult to intimidate or discourage, that allows him to fight through pain or failures that might break your average man. In addition, he is a sincere and deeply believing Catholic whose faith provides him great strength in times of trouble (and even might prove useful against the occasional demonic foe, if it comes down to it). Specials 'Celebrity --' Whatever his reputation with the city at large, Hell's Kitchen is Daredevil's home and he's greatly appreciated. Most residents of the neighborhood have had their lives saved by DD at one time or another. This makes the neighborhood quite loyal to their hero. No cop or fed asking around about him would get any tips here, should he ever become a fugitive, and they would rally around to protect him, hide him, and even potentially rise up and fight alongside him if circumstances came down to it. New York has many protectors, but Hell's Kitchen belongs to Daredevil. Resources, Gear, and Paraphernalia 'Costume --' DD's costume combines protection with maximum flexibility, allowing him to move freely and engage in all the acrobatic maneuvering that's so much a part of his fighting style. Nonetheless, the costume is lined with light kevlar, giving him bulletproofing against small arms fire, although high caliber firearms will still leave hella bruises and possibly even knock him unconscious from the force. The costume has numerous pockets and hidden pouches, allowing him to secret lockpicks, matches, first aid materials and all sorts of small items throughout his person. The cowl covers his eyes with red lenses, so that his blindness isn't immediately evident, and even possesses a feature which can make those lenses glow slightly, leaving the impression of crimson eyes looking in from the darkness. When combined with the little devil horns atop the cowl, this can be a rather frightening effect, properly framed. 'Batons --' Daredevil keeps a several varieties of his battle batons, apt to different situations and usages. He has a pair that disguise easily as a red cane, quickly broken down into individual weapons if needed suddenly (and allowing him to retain the cane's hook if need be, a useful item in some situations). He has several spare sets of these batons should any be lost, and usually keeps at least four upon his person when going out on patrol, kept in holsters. The batons possess the ability to fire a nearly silent grappling line, propelled by compressed air and with a small hook he can use to grasp ledges, fire escapes, pipes and even the occasional escaping criminal. The steel cable line is extraordinarily durable, easily able to bear the weight of Matt and two other people if needed, should he need to swing people out of harm's away. As binding, the cable can withstand virtually any level of human strength, although increasing levels of superhuman musculature will test it eventually to the breaking point. He often uses the batons as throwing weapons, knowing their materials and dimensions so perfectly that he can ricochet them at amazing angles, often leading them to come right back to his hand. He may also lock batons together to make a bo style longstaff or even hook cables to create sets of nunchaku, although he typically just uses them in their original form. 'Contacts & Sources --' Whether by violence, favors, bribery or sheer intimidation, Daredevil's assembled a rather wide network of snitches, stool pigeons, insiders and squealers. Through these scummy, but nonetheless reliable providers, he often has a close pulse on criminal happenings in the city: the movers and shakers, big events, changes, upcoming heists, shipments and the like. If he's after someone or something, Matt usually knows someone he can shake down for what he needs to know. He's also often tipped off by friendly locals who know how to leave messages for the local vigilante. Matt Murdock, meanwhile, has connections with the DA's office, the cops, the FBI and even a little bit at SHIELD, letting him know what the other side of the war on crime is often up to and giving him favors to potentially call in for an investigation or case he's working. As with anything, sources are finite and the more he presses on them or asks for favors, the less he's likely to get out of them in the future. 'Blind Guy --' People will sometimes try to get away with or sneak things around a blind person that they wouldn't with someone sighted, thinking they're getting away with it. Matt, of course, has advantages other blind people do not, and can often find out when someone's trying to do something behind his back (or behind those of others) because people don't think he's capable of noticing. It also generally causes some people to underestimate him, whether it be in the courtroom or elsewhere. Like many with a disability, Matt faces some measure of discrimination and disrespect as a result, although Matt is particularly firm and insistent on both sticking up for his rights and respect (as well as those of others). Flaws and Drawbacks 'Blind --' For all the compensations of his other senses, Matt Murdock is, nonetheless, blind. He cannot perceive purely visual phenomena, such as colors, two dimensional pictures or anything displayed on the increasingly ubiquitous screens of phones, pads and computers in the world around him. Intangible projections like holograms or ghosts will also exist to him only if they speak. He can't read watches or clocks, unless they're pre-programmed by others to alert him. While his radar sense compensates for much (and provides things normal vision never could), Matt's blindness does still have costs and consequences. 'Secret Identity --' Although he's considered being open, for the moment, the benefits of retaining the secret that Matt Murdock and Daredevil are one and the same has remained the right choice. Having his vigilante activities exposed could cause Matt significant legal troubles, including potential disbarment. His friends and family would also become targets of criminal reprisal. Protecting his secret has meant sometimes having to sit idly and let things happen when he could intervene, although there's a limit to how much of that he'll tolerate before doing the right thing. He has to pretend, often, to not notice or know things he knows very well and has to remember not to let that slip. 'Compromised --' While Matt's identity is a secret to most, his former girlfriend and secretary, Karen Page, compromised the truth about Daredevil to Matt's worst enemy: The Kingpin of Crime. The Kingpin has used this knowledge several times to try and ruin the life of his nemesis and, while Matt has managed to counter them so far, it always remains a threat over his head, physically, socially and professionally. He doesn't know with whom Fisk has shared this information and can never be sure when it might blow up in his face. He suspects that, in part, is why Kingpin's never gone fully public, so that he can keep Matt dangling on a hook, squirming and vulnerable. 'Paladin --' Daredevil is a hero, not just a crimefighter. Whatever the odds, he'll stand against them. Whatever the consequences, he'll do the right thing. He won't take a life, even to save his own. He won't back down from a threat, even if it's far outside his weight class. He will keep fighting long after he should have quit and will always put the safety of others before his own. He will do hard things and make sacrifices to retain his integrity, even to his own detriment, even against the urging of friends and allies. These are the costs of believing in good and evil, in heaven and hell, in hard moral truths. 'Mortal Man --' While his senses and skills make him incredibly formidable and an expert at what he does, Daredevil is, nonetheless, what they call a 'street level' hero. Many superhuman threats are simply beyond his capability to affect or stop. Which won't stop him from trying, if it means saving the lives of innocent people. 'Sensory Overload --' The cost of having hyperkeen senses is that those senses can potentially be overwhelmed with too much intensity or too much stimuli. Extraordinarily loud noises and sonic attacks can cause him intense pain, even make his ears bleed, and incapacitate him to unconsciousness if sufficiently strong and persistent. Smells can be almost toxic, causing him to feel sick and making him even more vulnerable to inhaled toxins and gases (although he can also detect them much more easily before they reach that density, often giving him time to take sufficient precautions). While he's become adept at isolating different sounds, he can also become simply bombarded with too much input and find himself taxed or overwhelmed. Relationships 'Franklin "Foggy" Nelson --' Matt's best friend since law school, his closest confidante and a damn fine lawyer in his own right. Foggy is often underestimated in the courtroom for his portly form and gentle demeanor, but he matches his partner in legal acumen and might even be more ruthless if given the opportunity. Foggy knows Matt is Daredevil, and often helps in providing distractions and excuses to help cover that identity. He has also, more than once, become a target of those wishing revenge on the Scarlet Swashbuckler. 'Elektra Natchios --' Matt's former lover became an assassin, trained by the vicious ninja clan known as the Hand, and the two have frequently clashed and sometimes allied as times have gone on. Their relationship is always tumultuous, especially from the times she's worked alongside Matt's archenemy, the Kingpin. 'Wilson Fisk --' The so-called Kingpin of Crime, il capo de capo of East Coast organized crime. Fisk controls a vast criminal empire, has great influence in the business world and generally considers himself untouchable. Daredevil has been the greatest thorn in his piggish side for years, while Fisk has tried to destroy Murdock's life on numerous occasions. 'Karen Walker --' Former secretary to Nelson & Murdock, ex-junkie and pornographic actress. She sold the secret of Matt's identity to the Kingpin, a sin for which Matt has forgiven her, but Karen hasn't yet forgiven herself. 'Natalia Romanova --' The Russian superspy and Daredevil have worked together on several occasions, as well as being romantically entangled for some period of time. The two parted mutually and on good terms, keeping in touch to share information and provide support as needed. 'Bullseye --' Kingpin's chief assassin and Daredevil's fiercest physical foe, this deadly killer claims he never misses. Daredevil's continued existence, however, would seem to indicate otherwise. 'Typhoid Mary --' Mary Walker is a victim turned predator, her personality split by abuse into three parts. While Mary herself remains innocent, her alter egos, Typhoid and Bloody Mary, have clashed with Daredevil numerous times, while attempting to seduce him in the same breath. Characters with Rels Set Staff Notes Category:Sheets Category:Earth-24800 Sheets